We know that listening to people is important. Listening helps us to learn from patients, carers, staff and communities. In turn, this can help make sure health services meet all of our needs.

There's lots of ways we listen:

• We attend groups across our region to hear what is important to people.
• We involve people when we plan, review or change services. We listen to people's experiences of services, and what would make them better. Find out about more about ongoing and past projects.
• We reach out to people and groups who don't use our services. We also reach out to those groups who often have worse health. We often do this working with the voluntary sector. Find out one of the ways we work with the voluntary sector.
• We work with Healthwatch to hear what people are saying about our services.
• We have user-led groups to support service transformation, like the Mental Health Advisory Group which is made up of 25 people who have lived experience, who work in the NHS and in the voluntary sector. The group is set up to influence NHS mental health strategic priorities which include suicide prevention, community mental health services, inpatient mental health services and improving access to talking therapies.
• We look at what people say in surveys. For example, the GP patient survey and the cancer quality of life service.
• We hear what people tell us in complaints or raise through their MPs.
• We hear what people tell us on social media on X @NENC_NHS, Instagram @nenc_nhs and Facebook NorthEastandNorthCumbriaNHS
• You can email us if you would like to share your thoughts with us.

This work helps the people who plan, deliver and lead our services hear people's views. This affects decisions about your health services.

We had thought about setting up a citizens' panel. Whilst we are still exploring if this is still what we would like to do, we are continuing to evolve our programme of citizen engagement; how we listen to people and communities across the North East and North Cumbria.

Stay informed...

Want to find out more about what is happening across the North East and North Cumbria?

• You can read our ICB updates here
• You can also sign up to receive our weekly updates into your email in-box.